Possible Xmas gifts for the GF.

[Old GIR]

What we won't do for.. never mind.

My girlfriend has been playing a bit of Fallout 3 recently and is currently discovering that she rather likes first person shooting games. We had a little discussion about a possible christmas present for her and she gave me a few guidelines.

- Not too scary. She freaks out easily. To illustrate what she finds scary, we played a bit of Unreal and Unreal 2 together. I very much doubt that anyone here will consider either game scary. Very occasionally these games will put you in some small, dark corridors with not a lot of room to move around in. And then suddenly they drop some enemies out of nowhere, trying to rush you. That scares the crap out of her. ()

- She doesn't really like killing people, especially if they looks realistic and tend to go about their own business. ()

- She doesn't really mind killing beasts or animals. Or vegetarians.

- This one is important. She is not really interested in playing 'dumb' shooters. She rather likes heavy tactical elements in gameplay and tends to excell at them. I think I can easily surprise her with new things in this category.

- *optional: she has a fetish for cultural / historical things. So if a game takes her to a nice piazza in Rome, she'll have a culturegasm.

- No Ewoks, fancy elves or Romulans. She gets irritated quite easily at themes that depend too much on a specific genre or series.

- No RPG elements, or semi RPG elements. The less talk and fewer stats to keep track of, the better.

Any thoughts?

[(GR)Killer]

Cod 4

[TurdDrive]

Dead space 2. Not scary at all.

[Old GIR]

Originally Posted by (GR)Killer

Cod 4

I've been thinking about the COD series a lot actually. Just not sure how she'll react to killing people in technicolour realism at this point. I'll probably get a game out of the COD series if I can't think of anything better.

[hal]

Portal/2?

[NRG]

Painkiller! All of the levels have themes based on eras or empires. Probably too scary for her though.

Half Life 2? Borderlands? Mass Effect? Rage?

[evilmrfrank]

Dungeon Defenders!

[xMurphyx]

Mirror's Edge!

and +1 for Portal/2

[Old GIR]

Originally Posted by hal

Portal/2?

Hi Hal, it's been a while. It's a game I already have and she has seen me play it. A lot of the Portal gameplay for her revolves around redoing little sections again and again until you get them right. I played the first one with her and I noticed her getting a bit frustrated at times. I also fear that by the time she finally gets the hang of it, the game will be over.

It doesn't have a lot of replay value once you've completed it once. Except for the multiplayer bit.

@ xMurphyx: I haven't played Mirror's Edge, but it's not really a shooter, is it? I'll show her a gameplay video.. see what she thinks of it.

@ NRG: Painkiller, good suggestion. I fear she'll think it's too simple a FPS though. Half Life 2.. She played a bit of it, but freaked out a bit too much in Ravenholm. Borderlands, Mass Effect and Rage are all games with either too much talking for her, or too many rpg mechanics to keep track of. I know, they're not exactly Baldur's Gate, but that's how she feels about it.

I don't mind if any of your suggestions are oldskool games.

[Hadmar]

Duke Nukem Forever maybe?

[xMurphyx]

Originally Posted by Old GIR

@ xMurphyx: I haven't played Mirror's Edge, but it's not really a shooter, is it? I'll show her a gameplay video.. see what she thinks of it.

Sure. There's a demo too.

As far as it being a shooter, it's a little tough if she wants a shooter but she doesn't want to kill people... Mirror's Edge has combat and you can disarm enemies and take their weapons from them and use them to shoot others, like in a shooter, but shooting people is completely optional and, personally, I think it's more fun if you refrain from shooting anybody and try to just knock them out. Up to her though.

[Twisted Metal]

Deus Ex HR? You can bypass most of the killing by being stealthy.

[NRG]

She really kills off a lot of options when it can't be scary, RPG-like or involve killing humans

[Plumb_Drumb]

tell her to stop playing Fallout 3, because it has too much RPG elements.
It's bad for our youth.

[Old GIR]

I settled on COD. She loves war dramas, so I think it will score high. It has a lot of tactical fluff that she'll like too. But if she doesn't, she can bloody well return it and get her downton abbey deeveedee.

[Big-Al]

TF2 (cos it's free now) :P

[Lruce Bee]

Any of the Uncharted games should fit the bill but since I'm playing Uncharted3 - Drakes Deception at the moment, I'd say get her to play that - it's unbelievably awesome.

Edit: You didn't say what platform you're buying for and the Uncharted series is PS3 exclusive unfortunately.

[Old GIR]

Originally Posted by Lruce Bee

Edit: You didn't say what platform you're buying for and the Uncharted series is PS3 exclusive unfortunately.

I know, I'm sorry. I'm so oldskool I still treat BU as a PC only site. We actually have a Wii and all, but.. I think we sort of bought it ironically.

Her reaction to Mirror's Edge was pretty much "there is no away I'm agile enough with the mouse to play that", but she did seem to like it.

[xMurphyx]

Of course she did. Why wouldn't she. The game is amazing.

Let her know that picking the rough general direction of a jump isn't harder than shooting some dude in the head and if you watch a video and someone navigates through a level with close to perfect flow, that's not what she has to do to get through it, for the most part. Stop, look around, step back a bit, take a running jump, hold on to the ledge, drag yourself up, etc. She'll be running like a pro in no time though.

The game also supports gamepads, on the odd chance she's more comfortable with one, although for this game you really don't need one (I have it on the 360 and the PC and both versions control fine). E.g. if you buy a wired 360 controller you just plug that in and the game automatically works with it and even shows the appropriate button prompts (i.e. "press (A) to call the elevator" instead of "press Joypad0")!
Something to think about.
The game is only 10$ these so maybe you want to throw in the controller anyway to get out of the cutsey-you-thought-about-me-gift range and into the serious-gift range.
Not to sound like a materialistic a-hole, but you know?

[Lruce Bee]

I'd also recommend the Serious Sam games as well for mindless carnage (done in a comical way)- very accessible and some beautiful locations to gawp at.